The technical consultant for the film was Frank R. Bowerman, who was president of the American Academy for Environmental Protection at the time.

One of the scenes of the "beautiful earth" shown to Sol as he is dying is an opening shot from Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) (a flock of sheep on a green hillside).

The scene where Thorne and Roth share a meal of fresh food was not originally in the script, but was ad-libbed by Charlton Heston and Edward G Robinson at director Richard Fleischer's request.

The videogame in Simonson's apartment, "Computer Space", was one of the first coin-operated videogames, manufactured by Nutting Associates in 1971 and designed by Nolan Bushnell, who later founded Atari and designed "Pong."

One set of scenes in the original release, where a second family is housed with Thorne and Roth, was deleted from later copies of the film.

Coincidentally, the director's surname, Fleischer, is German for "butcher."

Soylent Green was based on Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!" novel first published in 1966.